


To See Worlds in the Grains of Stars

by azcendio



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Eros and Psyche, F/M, Reincarnation, Soulmates, a parallel universe project, flower shop, more tags to be added because of au, that will basically be as many au worlds as our hearts desire, with a bunch of call-backs to mythology and astronomy and universe feels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 19:03:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14527128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azcendio/pseuds/azcendio
Summary: I have met you on the shore, where this life washes against the next.In their first life, she is a star born from his destruction.  It’s a meeting of death and life, cataclysmic and consequential.  Their souls become one in the same, compressed together by force and cosmic fate.  And so, every life after that, she finds herself in him.  And he in her. And sometimes it is love at first sight, and sometimes it is too little, too late.  And sometimes it is nothing at all- just the briefest of glimpses, of touches, of wondering:will we meet again?





	1. Prologue

In every world there is to be, they are.

In their first life, she is a star born from his destruction.  It’s a meeting of death and life, cataclysmic and consequential.  Their souls become one in the same, compressed together by force and cosmic fate.  And so, every life after that, she finds herself in him.  And he in her. And sometimes it is love at first sight, and sometimes it is too little, too late.  And sometimes it is nothing at all- just the briefest of glimpses, of touches, of wondering:  _what if-_

 _“Could you love me?”_ Ben asks, in a quiet life filled with pregnant pauses and silent conflicts- implicit with hushed reveries.  He sits with her at a crossroads, dust clinging to their throats and hands restrained in their pockets.  Rey shrugs, unsure, decides it wouldn’t hurt to wait-

 _“Yes,”_ Rey answers in another life, Ben’s body still, unresponsive where he lies in her arms.   This life was not a quiet one.  Not a kind one.  And she wonders if she’ll ever get another to tell him-

_“I love you.”  
_

_“You’re my soulmate.”_

In some worlds, they get that chance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is going to be an experimental project dealing with interwoven/non-linear storylines based on various alternate universes I and others have wanted to see Rey and Ben in. Due to its experimental nature, tags and warnings will be added as I go, and I would love all and any comments and even requests for possible AUs to be interwoven. There is a solid ending in mind, but the middle (since it's pretty much detached storylines) is as much or as less as the heart desires. I hope you enjoy!


	2. Rooted in Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"I would rather die a hundred times than forgo the supreme joy of my marriage with you. For I love and cherish you passionately, whoever you are, as much as my own life, and I value you higher than Eros himself."_
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> “Do you ever get the feeling we’ve met before?” Rey asks wistfully, resting her head on her knuckles- fist smudging her already dirt-smeared cheek, and Ben can feel the heat deep in his chest veer straight for his ears. 
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> Everything about her is breathtaking, even in her “Take Me To Your Weeder” apron, soddy t-shirt and shorts- from the strength of her voice to the sculpted softness in the curve of her chin, neck and collarbones. As though the gods had lost one of their own to the wild of humanity. And Ben isn’t the only one to think so. Only, the boys she’s met before, and will continue to meet lined up outside their small world, wait until she’s washed up and polished marble to tell her how beautiful she is.
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> Then again, he doesn’t bother to tell her at all. So.
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> Ben frowns. “One out of ten, do not recommend. Your one-liners get worse everyday, Rey.”

This world is made of four walls, glass doors, and flowers.  

Ben enters it as he does every morning, carrying an empty wooden crate and all twenty-three years of him looming awkwardly above and around the customers of Fated Flowers.  Today, it’s not too busy and he manages to get to the front counter without bumping into the small family browsing through the “Get Well” baskets. The obnoxious barrel of tulips planted beside the register, however, only barely survives an encounter with Ben’s shin.

Not for the first time, he scowls and refrains from reiterating the obvious: the shop needs to expand.

“Don’t you think there could be a little less inside the shop?” he asks, regarding the sea of shrubbery and walls of flowers that close in on him more and more every time he arrives for morning deliveries.  To the observing customers, he seems to ask no one. As no one appears to be behind the counter. In fact, he speaks to the hunched mass of green apron and splayed legs crouched beneath the counter’s wooden slab.  Which is covered in a litter of stem-bottoms, pollen dust, ribbons, and a slew of undone bouquets and dirt-sprinkled pots. So, Ben holds the crate, patiently waiting, curiously eying the small hand that darts out from under the counter and between his feet- grabbing escapee pruning shears.

“I do, actually,” the hand speaks before disappearing beneath the counter.

There is a victorious sigh and then the mass is squirming, popping upright- an over-optimistic blooming that results in a vibrant smile.  His spirited coworker grins at him, in spite of the tornado of dust and petals in her bun. She’s always some sort of natural disaster, tousled and falling apart or being completely swept away, and yet-

“I think there could be little less of _you_ in the shop,” she tosses teasingly, haphazardly brushing a hand through her hair before Ben can make a remark.  Of course, he doesn’t. He’s too busy standing perfectly still, watching her.

“You’re like a tree, taking up all the space meant for my garden.”

At that, Ben smirks, reminiscing on how- since Rey’s hiring three months ago- the place has gradually turned into a forest.  In the cramped confines of a polluted, overly-congested city.

“Have you told Maz yet?” he asks.  “I’m sure she’d love to hear how your personal whims are weeding over her business.”

“She actually loves how my whims are weeding, thank you very much,” Rey replies and rolls her eyes.  Carefully, she plucks up the arrangements from the counter so Ben can finally drop off the crate. As she does so, Ben notices a few stray pieces of pink yarrow weaved through the brown strands of her hair.  Before he can decide on whether to pluck up the courage to pluck them out, Rey turns her back to shepherd the day’s deliveries.

It gives him a moment to collect himself, and to fill his nostrils with the scent of Rey’s work.  Her life-work, it seems. It’s not, though. The textbooks, strewn on the floor behind the counter, bright with highlighted passages and populated with floral sticky notes, warns Ben not to root himself in the idea of her being around long.  And why should she, if neither is he?

Ben had planned on quitting three months ago, right at the beginning of spring.  It was only two weeks into the job, and he was already tired of vacuuming dirt from the backseat of his car, of holding back pollen-induced sneezes and rolling like a log into strangers’ personal lives and family matters, with only a handful of flowers as apology for the intrusion.  Even more-so, he was tired of Maz dropping into each bouquet a reminder of his own family, a comment on how they were doing since he’d left to make his “own way”. Always, she had something prophetic to say about his life, better saved and written on a customer’s card. So, Ben had planned on quitting.

But then he had walked into that same little shop, and found it completely transformed into a new world- a girl of nineteen at the center of it, with a handful of daffodils cradled in her arms.

“I wish I had your job,” Rey had sighed over a bushel of lilacs just delivered.  The entire store had smelled of them, a warm perfume that lingered, long after their season, in the nape of Rey’s neck.  “I would love to see our customers’ expressions. You deliver happiness and love every day, Ben. You’re a modern Cupid.”

She said it to make him smile. He did.  But he also said, “That’s a really corny line, Rey.  You should put it on a card.”

That is the extent of their relationship, three months in.  Him, preferring the sight of her to the beauty she grew around them, and always managing to step all over it with his big feet.  And her, regarding him as an odd, but harmless, creature in her garden. It’s a miracle she hasn’t shooed him away yet. Almost as though she enjoys spotting him moping amidst the flowers.  Almost as though-

Before Ben can do what he’s warned himself not to, Rey turns around and starts placing deliveries inside the crate.  He knows better than to help, after being swatted away one too many times before. Instead, he observes the different arrangements she’s made today, each one absolutely perfect in their disarray.  Clumped together in the crate, it appears a small field of wildflowers with her as their guardian.

If he lets his eyes linger, if he doesn’t blink, his vision blurs along with reality.  The walls fall away from them, Rey’s hair falling away from its confines and cascading to a longer length down her shoulders, curling at her waist.  Her loosened apron is spun into an emerald chiton dress, blending seamlessly with the colors of a meadow in which she stands, undisturbed and unaware of the eyes that watch and adore from the trees.

Rey’s gaze lifts from the field, hands full of peonies when she calls out, “Ben?”

He blinks and the walls are back to where he’d left them, covered in mosses and horizontal flowerbeds of Rey’s creation.  The forest he imagines still feels real, surrounding him. It makes it hard to focus, harder still when Rey’s eyes grow a curious expression.

She leans on the edge of the crate, peering up at him.  Looking straight into the roots of him.

“Do you ever get the feeling we’ve met before?”  Rey asks wistfully, resting her head on her knuckles- fist smudging her already dirt-smeared cheek, and Ben can feel the heat deep in his chest veer straight for his ears.  

Everything about her is breathtaking, even in her “Take Me To Your Weeder” apron, soddy t-shirt and shorts- from the strength of her voice to the sculpted softness in the curve of her chin, neck and collarbones.  As though the gods had lost one of their own to the wild of humanity. And Ben isn’t the only one to think so. Only, the boys she’s met before, and will continue to meet lined up outside their small world, wait until she’s washed up and polished marble to tell her how beautiful she is.

Then again, he doesn’t bother to tell her at all.  So.

Ben frowns.  “One out of ten, do not recommend.  Your one-liners get worse everyday, Rey,” he mutters as he tests the weight of his crate.  There is still room for more, and Rey definitely has more to unload on him, but he’s very ready to leave.

Rey scoffs at him and keeps her arms on her side of the crate, buckling down.  “Ben! I’m not testing out pick-up lines on you right now! I’m trying to have a deep conversation.”

He lifts up the crate easily despite her efforts.  “It’s not very deep when we live in a city like this,” he replies with cocked eyebrow, quick to point out the obvious that: “we probably _have_ met before.”

Her response is the usual: eyes narrowed to slits, head shaking in exasperation when she says, “not here, smartass!”

“Then where?”

“You know!” Rey makes a vague hand gesture in the air, wiggles her eyebrows in a way that almost makes Ben smile despite himself.  “Out there!”

When he lets out a laugh, Rey is visibly offended, hand at her hip.  “What? Are you telling me you’ve never had a strange sense of deja vu before?  Or dreams that feel real?”

That stops his laughter and he leans forward, momentarily pressing the crate back onto the counter to steady himself.  

Ben sees it again, in Rey’s hazel eyes (that perfect balance of greenery and brown earth): the image of her walking in a meadow that smells and feels like it’s happening at this very moment, yet can only belong to the past.  To the complete, wild imagination.

“Feel real? Yes.  Are real?” Ben snorts, shakes his head at her.  “No. You know, Maz’s hippy dippy ways are really taking a hold of you.”

Rey’s lips press into a thin line, and Ben wonders if finally her patience with him is about to snap.  Instead, she sighs. “You’re a real dick.”

“Can’t argue with that,” he replies, unphased.  “You know quite a few.” He squints, mocking contemplation as Rey’s expression hardens.  “... How many now?”

“None at the moment,” Rey bites out before groaning, burying herself in the task of wrapping one of the sidelined bouquets.  Ben can tell she feels spiritually connected to them. Beautiful, and probably going to wither on display. “Sometimes, I feel cursed.”

He should leave, doesn’t want to be late for his first delivery, but regret pours liquid cement on his feet.  It instantly hardens, holding him in place. Even though he doesn’t know how to right, yet another, smartass remark gone, predictably, sour.

Rey, as always, has it covered.  She recovers quickly, shrugs. “You know, maybe I’ll just become a plant lady.”

Ben stares dubiously.  “... A plant lady?”

“You know, like a cat lady, but with succulents and ferns.”  Rey gets a dreamy, adoring look, simply from imagining the splendor of it.  “Just, green all over the place.”

Ben scoffs.  “I think you’ve been a plant lady for a while now, Rey.  Do you ever stop to think, I don’t know, maybe your boyfriends are actually lost inside your apartment?  Maybe even choking on a vine?”

“Oh, shut it,” Rey snaps.  “It’s just my room at the moment.  My flatmate has,” Rey scowls and makes air-quotes, “allergies.”

“But, soon!  Soon,” she plots, “I will have my own place and for every failed relationship, I will plant a seed.”  Energized by the idea, she raises two thumbs in the air. “Green thumb of plants, meet black thumb of relationships!  Together, it won’t be so bad!” She grins cheesily between them, raising her eyebrows in wait of Ben’s approval.

He laughs, and it’s cleansed of sarcasm or skepticism.  

“There he is,” Rey chimes, pleased.  The sound of her voice mutes entirely the ring of the doorbell as another customer enters.  Or leaves. He hasn’t paid any attention to his job since seeing Rey.

Ben clears his throat of the joy she brings him and lifts the crate up suggestively.  “Guess I should go,” he says. He imagines a look of disappointment in the fall of Rey’s lips, surely.

“Shoo!” Rey urges a beat slower than usual.  She waves her hands at him, and points a finger in warning.  “And don’t you kill a single flower this time!”

He, honest to God, tries.  But by the end of the work day, he’s pricked himself on three cacti, has ten broken stems and an odd feeling in his gut.

 

* * *

 

That night, Ben dreams of her and him, in places they’ve never been together- but should be.  Could be.

 

* * *

 

He never remembers his dreams in the morning.  Instead, they spill out of the eyes when he stares too long at something, someone- especially Rey.  

It happens once on a summer Sunday.  He’s in Maz’s garden, on the rooftop of the shop’s building, picking the last of roses when the sound of the greenhouse creaking open on rusted hinges announces Rey’s presence.  It’s a small, cramped thing, Maz’s greenhouse, and it takes constant attention to keep the rust at bay during the spring and summer. But, from where he sits and from the angle of the sun beating down and making him squint through sweat and heat-exhaustion, it appears cloud white and as grand as a glass palace in the sky.  In a white linen tunic, skin heated crimson and gold, Rey looks the part of the goddess who lives there, perhaps Venus. Or better still, someone who could easily eclipse that deity.

Ben’s vision blurs further, and Rey’s tunic runs long and sweeping as she walks towards him, and her arm- once holding a basket- now beacons him home.

He cuts himself on an arrow-sharp thorn.

“Fuck,” he hisses, pulling out of the reverie at the same time he yanks his hand away from the demented flowerbed.  

“Again, Ben?” Rey laughs as he glares at his thumb, which is oozing blood.  She plops down beside him. Puts her basket aside. Ignores his “hey!” when she grabs his hand to inspect the wound.  All the while, he inspects her, makes sure she’s as real as the stinging cut on his thumb. There is reality in the chunks of hair stuck with sweat to her neck, the collision of petals and mulch in her perfume, and so much dirt under her nails he’s concerned she hasn’t left any for the plants.  And yet, he is still not convinced she isn’t wholly mirage.

“Sometimes I wonder why you still work here,” Rey chuckles, shaking her head as she tugs his hand- not towards any bandages, but right over the flowerbed that injured him in the first place.

Sometimes he wonders, too.  After all, it’s a job his parents got him to help out an old family friend, right before he abruptly left home.  It isn’t one he really needs. Yet, now it’s four months past his initial quitting day and still he sits there, a masochist pricking himself on thorns every Sunday.  

Everytime he wonders, though, Ben catches a glimpse of Rey.  The wondering stops then.

Rey squeezes his thumb over the soil.

His wondering turns to something completely different.  Something horrific.

“Are you… bleeding me?”

“Yes,” Rey says, low and foreboding.  And still staring, squeezing at his thumb.  “You will make a fine sacrifice for my plants.”

“ _Your_ plants?” Ben’s voice is shrill with outrage.  “Where is Maz anyway? Did you feed her to the plants, too?”

Her grip, small as it is around his wrist, is ridiculously sturdy when he tries to pull away and struggles to escape her sadistic watering.  Rey laughs with her entire body.

“Relax!  I’m not going _Little Shop of Horrors_ on you,” she says through the laughter, and he does as she commands.  “I’ll bandage you, eventually. Just…” Her smile turns mischievous. “Blood has a lot of nutrients and we don’t have that many roses left for the season.”

Ben huffs, looking slightly miffed.  “Buds before buds, huh.”

He regrets the pun only briefly, feels validated when Rey’s smile bursts into rambunctious laughter, full of snorts and mortified looks.  “You could say that,” Rey says when she calms down, shaking her head. “Though, you really shouldn’t.”

Her focus goes back to Ben’s blood, which drips slow and thick, and turns the dirt an odd, burnt color.

“You know,” Rey muses quietly, completely calmed beside him.  She has a similar, odd and burnt look in her eyes. He’s seen that look a few times now.  Sometimes, it shows when he finds her in the back room, putting on her apron and her smile.  Or, when he spots her through the window, shop empty, her hands idle in the dirt and her mind idle in thought.  Sometimes, rarely, it’s when they sit like this, together on Sundays doing inventory. She peels back a few protective petals, tells him:

“My mom did this to me once.  I was trying to cut my doll’s hair.  Instead, I nearly cut off my own finger.  I went to her, crying, and she was tending to her garden on the balcony.  I thought she would put a band-aid on. She took my finger, and bled me over a pot of aloe vera.”  Rey rolls her eyes, her mouth frozen in a strange, crooked smile. “The irony didn’t hit me until very recently.  She did put a band-aid on, eventually. After I’d learned my lesson.”

At the end of the tale, she glances up at Ben, sees something unsettling and looks back to the roses.  “She was a good mom.” The praise is quiet, nearly gets lost in the breeze.

“Really?” Ben questions, ever the cynic.  “This, the same mother who says you should be married by… what… twenty?”

“Hm.”  Rey shrugs her bottom lip as she nods in mock contemplation.  “Yes. That gives me a few more months. By the end of the season, really.”  There’s a smile at the corner of her lips now, and she traces a finger over one of the roses.  “As the last petal on the last rose falls…”

Ben isn’t as amused as he usually is by her dramatics.  She sighs, reiterates: “she _is_ a good mom, though.”

“Debatable.”

“She’s just concerned!  They both are.” Rey’s first instinct is to defend them, with flushed cheeks and fierce tone.  Ben tries to fight his first instinct, does his best not to roll his eyes to the back of his skull.  From the stories she tells, sure, Rey’s parents are concerned. But not about their daughter. “They want me to be taken care of.”

Despite how quickly she rises to protect her parents, Ben still sees that odd look in her eyes.  A wound, bleeding. She doesn’t quite know how to patch it up.

“Did your mom call recently?  To tell you she wants you to ‘be taken care of’?”  He really does try not sound as vindictive as he truly feels.

Rey grimaces; his attempt fails.  “She did call, yesterday. Told me I should quit.”

That throws him for a loop.  “Quit your _paying_ job?”

“Oh, no!  Not the job. God, no, never.”  She almost laughs. Instead, she waves a hasty hand at him, halting his confusion.  Whatever laughter is teasing in her throat clamps up rather quickly.

She swallows, avoids Ben’s studious stare.  “School. She told me to quit school. Told me dad’s worried it’s a waste-” Ben opens his mouth, not even caring how red his face is, but Rey waves him off again.  Though, she’s the one that looks resigned- “No, I get it! I do. There’s not much money to go around, even with my scholarship. And his disability check isn’t covering all the bills-”

“-or the alcohol.”

“Ben,” Rey sighs and it’s supposed to be a warning, but she sounds so fatigued.  Rey will blame it on the heat, and the long hours of work, but he knows better now.

She may be holding his thumb, but he holds her soul.  Can feel its turmoil rough between his fingers.

“You cannot quit university.”

“I _can_.  I just don’t want to,” Rey rebuts, insulted.  She makes a face, and it’s stuck between disappointment and ever-resilient optimism.  “They… have different mindsets. My mom actually rooted for me to go to university, thought it was a good idea,” her face leans further into disappointment, “because then I’d meet a rich frat boy, or a doctor-to-be, and get married by graduation or- by the grace of God- even sooner than that!  She always said ‘God didn’t make you pretty for no reason’,” and Rey’s expression turns irritable, scowling down at the roses. “If that’s all there is to it, why’d God bother giving me a brain.”

Ben leans forward, eyebrows raised, the obvious blaring in his stare: “so you could listen to reason, and not to those idiots.”

Rey catches her laughter before it can escape, scolds Ben with a single look.  “Those idiots are my parents, Ben. I complain, but- well, I know they want the best for me.  It’s not their fault their notion of ‘best’ is…” she shrugs, “skewed. They don’t want me to live paycheck-to-paycheck is all, and apparently beauty is my greatest, most valuable asset.”

“Bullshit.”

She gaps at the vehemency of his curse.  Her eyes widen and spark in jaunty challenge.  “Are you telling me I’m not pretty? As I hold your hand over a bed of thorns?”

For a second, Ben’s mouth falls limp, hanging in his own trap.  He’s managed, for four months now, to skirt around this topic- barely, with all his stolen glances and dazed stares.  He’s been lucky to be so invisible to her in this way.

Painfully aware of the blush spreading wild over his face, Ben hopes, prays, he is still invisible.

“No,” he finally replies, briskly, reminding himself of the anger that first colored his skin.  “I think it’s bullshit that they want the best for you. They’re looking out for themselves, seeing as they’re more than willing to live off _your_ paycheck-to-paycheck.  They’re just hoping to live off a lot more.”

Rey’s face scrunches up, indignant.  “And why not? They’re my family, Ben.”  Her face smooths out as she thinks over that word: family.  “I’m supposed to take care of them.”

There’s the making of a plea in her voice, a desperate holding out for hope that Ben is not a stranger to:   _If I take care of them, they’ll finally care for me._

He is silent, lets her hope.

“There,” Rey huffs, grinning triumphantly.  Suddenly, his thumb is relinquished. “I have bled you dry.”

His replying smile is a subdued, hesitant one.  It follows after her as she stands up, gearing to leave him for busy work.  

“Rey,” he calls quietly, partly hoping she doesn’t hear and they can bury the conversation, put back on the facade of shallow friendship.  But they have roots now, and Rey hears him. She stops, looks back, and he is forced to speak. He relaxes his jaw, utterly fails to reel in the extent of his concern when he says, “make sure they don’t bleed _you_ dry, okay?”

Now her smile mimics his.  She swallows something painful and dry.  Only gives a nod in reply before disappearing behind a screen of foxgloves.

Ben feels lightheaded, and wonders just how much of him she’s taken for her garden.

 

* * *

 

That night, he dreams of sleeping in a bed much more giving than his.  Something soft and warm is pressed to his back, a weight heavy behind him.  It sobs, silently, and trembles. Each motion shakes right through him and, incapable of ignoring it, he turns-

It is a she, and she is Rey.  Not as Ben knows her, but as he wants to- bare and embraced.  Except, the room’s darkness is oppressive and she cries for a family that has cast her out, longing to see them again regardless of his warnings of their malice.

So, he gives into her wishes.  Rushes to soothe her in the only way he knows how: kissing the pooling of tears at her eyes and stroking her cheek.  Until she is peaceful again, asleep in his arms. And never once seeing how much he loves her.

 

* * *

 

He remembers the dream.  He remembers it, well into autumn.  Well into Rey’s fall flings, which come apart one after the other in the same sequential order as the decay of leaves.  

At least she studies through all of it, and it’s the only piece of her life that echoes the summer conversation they had.  She doesn’t speak much of her family with him again, keeps their conversations as cool and light as the breeze that picks up outside the shop from time to time.  And he wonders again why he doesn’t leave and move on, seeing as he refuses to make himself visible to her in the way that matters most.

As always, he stops wondering when he sees her morning smile- the only shred of natural light as the days shrink shorter.  But his will and his patience (with himself, with the passing of time) gets shorter, too. Until it stops altogether, Ben falling short at the door to Fated Flowers, seeing through the glass a man in a suit, at the counter, leaning in to kiss Rey too quickly, too placidly, before walking towards the door Ben still blocks from the outside.  He barely moves when the suitor opens the door. He becomes an obstruction, a tree on the sidewalk that refuses to make way. And because of this, the suitor (of appearance too transient to bother describing) brushes past Ben the same way he would that natural nuisance.

After a beat, Ben pulls himself together, yanks his roots out of the cement and enters the shop.  Rey’s back is turned to him, her hands already busy pressing dirt around the circumference of a clay pot- an anemone plant lying on the table, prepared for transfer.  

Ben drops his crate onto the counter.  The sound of it, like a cannon going off, makes Rey jump and nearly drop a shovel-full of soil onto the floor.  When she turns and sees him, unapologetic and particularly stoic, she’s all teeth- smiling through the shock.

“Jesus, Ben!  Good morning to you, too.”  

His replying silence is not altogether unusual, so Rey’s muscles continue to smile as she starts loading the crate.  He helps this time, not wanting to stand in the afterglow of her blush nor the afterthought of that man (the first he’s ever seen actually enter _their_ world).  Rey doesn’t bother to shoo him away this time.

“Guess what,” she hums over a cluster of gardenias.  The smell of them is potent and nauseating.

“What?” Through clenched jaw, he plays dumb and tries not to crush the stems of a rose bouquet in his fist.

“I think I might have finally found the answer to all my problems.”

Ben doesn’t glance up from the crate.  “Are we talking about your statistics exam again or?”

“No,” Rey chides and bats him with a fallen leaf.  “I met a new guy!”

“Hm.”

Despite his efforts, even that little grunt is spiteful.

“It’s different this time,” Rey asserts, her exuberance refusing to be dimmed by Ben’s negativity.  “He checks in every box.”

“That’s great,” Ben lies, blatantly.  He points a finger at the last few deliveries behind her.  “Could you get those and fill in _this_ box, please?”

For a time, they stare at each other- Rey’s mouth slack in confusion and Ben refusing to budge a single muscle of reflection.  Then, she sighs and turns away from him, her hands stiff as she places the anemone into its new home. She preps it and herself, before coming back around.

Her expression is darkened when she returns, optimism buried deep under a toxic mix of disappointment and fear of disappointing.

“I thought you’d be happy for me,” Rey confesses quietly.  Ben groans in frustration, takes the plant from her hands and tries not to think of the feel of her fingers flinching and fleeting from his touch.  Feigning a delicate nature. Too delicate to be touched by the likes of him.

His frustration is just an outer layer, a thin skin hiding and protecting a green seed of jealousy.  Or, more accurately, envy.

“I want to be,” he admits, not so quietly.  He shoves the plant between all the rest, and it disappears into insignificance.  “But you say that about every guy and then every guy turns out to be a complete douchebag.”

“Not this one.”

Her certainty on the matter makes his grip splinter on the sides of the crate.  “What makes ‘this one’ so different?”

Rey sputters.  “Well! He’s nice, for starters.”

This means nothing, and they both know it.  Tired of the same story, Ben looks her dead in the eyes. “They always start nice.”

Determined, Rey continues to list the reasons why she’s right this time.  (She’s not.)

“He’s going to be a pediatrician!  He comes from a good-

“-rich-”

“-family.” Rey, incensed, gawks at his frank insertion.  “Ben, seriously?”

“Just be honest, Rey,” the demand is exhausted.  “He’s rich.”

Her arms burst to either side of her, uncaring to whether or not there are customers in the store.  (There aren’t.)

“And?  What’s wrong with that?”  Her demand for an answer is just as exhausted, no matter how enraged it is.  “ _For once_ , things are working out.  He’s a good guy, and yeah! He’s rich, so that helps a lot!  My parents will be off my back and I can finally move out of that ridiculously expensive closet-”

“ _You’re moving in with him_?” Ben exclaims as though he’s been slapped.  He would have preferred that. Would have preferred a lot of things to this.  Though, it feels like all of those things are happening to him at this very moment- every prick of thorn and spike, all the subtle pains he treated as necessary penance, ephemeral in light of being near her, are no longer skin-deep.  They sink to the bone of him, and threaten to cut right through.

“How long have you known this ‘good guy’?”  He asks, voice strained.

“A month,” Rey answers, and it sounds like another confession.  “I didn’t want to tell you anything until I knew it was going somewhere-”

“-to his apartment.”

“Ben,” she sighs and he hates how easily just the sound of his name from her mouth can make him regret every word out of his.  “Living in this city is bleeding me dry. The apartment, even split with a flatmate is ridiculous. University. My parents. _You’re_ the one who said I shouldn’t quit university, I definitely don’t want to- _or can_ \- quit this job and I _can’t_ give up on my parents-”

They’re the whole reason she’s like this, desperate to grow love in the cracks of the sidewalk.  He snaps. “Yes, _you can_!  You need to let them go, Rey.  Pull them out of your life, if you have to, and let them go!  They’re fucking weeds-”

“I happen to like weeds!” Rey shoots back, indignant.  “They’re just trying to survive! Like me.”

“So, to survive, you’ll marry yourself off to the biggest wallet.”

“I never said I was marrying him!   _Shit!_  Ben.”

This entire time, the two of them bend towards one another like flowers to sunlight- further and further in, until his name is practically a kiss from her lips to his.  It’s too close. He’s burning, wilting. So, he leans away. Rey does not.

“Moving in with a guy you barely know, for the sake of convenience,” Ben attempts calm, reason rather than outrage.  “It doesn’t sound like you, Rey.”

“Doesn’t sound like me?”  The words come out sour upon repeating.  “Ben, you don’t know what I sound like outside this shop.  You don’t know me. Obviously, if you think I’m doing this just for the convenience.  Do I love him? No, but I could. I _will_ , because I’m tired of waiting for-”  

Rey stops herself short, finally leans back before the red in her cheeks can spread any farther.  

But Ben presses, “for what?” Demands an answer he has no right to, really.  Rey realizes as much, makes a gesture with her hand; a white flag waves.

“Fuck it,” she mutters, shoves the last delivery into the crate, dismissing Ben by refusing to look at him.  “I don’t need to explain myself to you.”

“No, you really don’t.”

The air is stiflingly still after that, his tone such a toxic repellent he wonders at the resilience of the plants in not instantly withering.  Rey is not so resolute. Ben sees the instant it hits her, paling and straining her. For a moment, she stares down at the flowers, breathing them in to calm herself.  To gather their strength for her own.

She snaps her head up to confront him, and Ben is forced to witness how hurt and disdain twist her kind features.  

“You think I’m that shallow?” Rey seethes, voice low with loathing, quick with impulse.  “If all I ever give a fuck about is how rich a guy is- if I don’t give a shit how much of an asshole he is- _why did I bother wasting so much of my goddamn time_ ?  Why don’t I just marry _you_?”

Part of Ben knows he deserved that.  It’s the part of him in his chest that keeps the anger and pain quiet, and feels distress when Rey visibly recoils from her own cruelty.  As she does so, every thorn and spike speared through him is simultaneously removed; every wound, opened.

The part of him that deserves this urges his hands to move, to grab the crate and lift it- no matter how heavy it or he feels.  That same part moves his lips to say, “I should go. I don’t want to be late for my deliveries.”

Every part of Rey expresses complete regret, and she opens her mouth to say something to make him stay, and he thinks he sees the rooting of his name there.  But part of her refuses to let it grow. So, he leaves.

Ben’s not sure which part of him keeps him home the next day, or finally calls Maz to quit.  All he’s sure of is, eight months too late, it’s finally over.

 

* * *

 

He regrets his decision before it’s even done being made.  

A week after quitting, Ben decides to take it back, to take what he can get as he can have it.  Beggars, after all, cannot be choosers. And the dreams he has each night makes him restless to see Rey in the morning, only to wake up alone with no way of knowing what her hair looks like that day, or what odd combination of flowers she’s got in her head.  So a weak beggar he is, praying he can have his life back.

But when he walks back into that world of flowers, he finds it changed again.  Rey does not beam at him from the counter, no flowers in her arms. Instead, Maz makes a rare morning appearance.  But, Maz is not the tasmanian devil he is used to either. No whirling around displays or ushering customers to and fro.  She sits on a stool Ben didn’t even know they had behind the counter, head in her hand, and gaze uncharacteristically hazy through her lens as she stares at the phone.

There is the sensation of stems breaking, an odd feeling in his gut.

“Maz.  What’s wrong?”

 

* * *

 

In dream, he finds her asleep upon dirt and grass.  

She has fallen from her trials, a streak of blood at her brow and an opened, cursed box at her side.  Unrestrained and diligent, he touches her, cleans the blood away, wipes the sleep from her features and casts it back into the box for good.  Demanding it leave her so that she may open her eyes and see him at last. As he is, as he wants to be for her: beside her, always.

She awakens slowly like a flower from winter; lips blooming red as roses, with cherry blossom cheeks, and the sun right there rising beneath her skin.   She is aglow, soft warmth and spirit in his arms. And then her eyes open, a smile radiating and relief releasing a wave of tears and exclamations at having finally found him.  And it’s as though he’s struck himself with his own arrow, all over again.

They share a lover’s embrace, in the path of a dream, at a happy ending.

In reality, he finds her asleep on a hospital bed.  

_“She was making a delivery run on her bike-”_

There is not a drop of blood on Rey’s brow.  All the bleeding is internal, rising purple and blue.  The neckbrace, feeding tube, the wires of various, nauseating colors spreading out from Rey’s chest and arms, the ventilator and pale lips around it- all of it restrains Ben.  

_“-and this taxi blew past the stop sign-”_

He is stopped in front of the doorway, standing there, chest heaving and sweat steaming at his neck.  Staring through the glass. At the rooting wires, with hate brimming hot in his eyes at the thought of her being planted here of all places.  Surrounded by heavy machines and flowerless walls. Restraint keeps Ben from charging in, yanking those wires out and tossing the nagging monitors out the window.  He knows better, even if it feels like shit.

“Ben?”

If it’s not her voice, Ben doesn’t want to hear it.  This voice in particular… Ben blinks, shallow, afraid of spilling the vulnerability reflected clear and wet in the glass.  A man in a white coat, twice Ben’s age with much older eyes is reflected there too, standing just beside him.

“Is it a medically induced coma?”  Ben asks, painfully aware of how stifled he sounds.  (And painfully aware of the answer he cannot bring himself to conclude.)

“‘Hello, Luke.  It’s been a while.’  Hello to you, too, nephew.”

The sarcasm, among other buried reasons, makes Ben turn to look at his uncle, who has an expectant, daring glint in his eyes.  Ben’s jaw clenches, and he takes a deep, drawn breath in and out to calm himself. And something, something pleading, about Ben’s expression makes Luke pause from making an overused, expired comment about his nephew’s temper.  

Instead, Luke glances through the glass door to his patient, looking contrite for once.  Instinctively, Ben follows his uncle’s gaze. His focus returns to Rey, unblinking. Yet, the truth of her doesn’t blur into fictional wishes.  There are no meadows or glass palaces behind her, no _deus ex machina_ in the sky.

“No,” Luke finally answers.  “It’s not.”

The breath Ben lets go this time is less controlled.  “And her vitals?”

“Improving.”  

Ben scoffs bitterly at the lack of specifics on which vitals need improving in the first place, at the implications.  

“There haven’t been any complications,” Luke continues calmly, despite Ben’s flare for dramatic cynicism, “and she’s been stable for the past two days.”  

Ben catches the end of a hopeful smile in the glass, pressing soft against Rey’s forehead.  

“She’s a fighter,” Luke says.

“Yeah,” the reply is lost in an abrupt, breathless spasm of laughter.  Ben’s. It lingers in a gentle smile of his own, coming to rest upon Rey’s hair.  He holds onto it. “Yeah, I know.”

He doesn’t notice his uncle’s gaze turn from Rey, to him, or how his expression shifts and wrinkles in curiosity.  “You work with her at Maz’s place, right?”

Part of him wants to be honest, to say that he quit.  The job. Rey. Thinking it was all thankless suffering.  As though delivering fucking flowers was a form of purgatory, making him witness all the possible poisonings of love he could ever regret now knowing, along with all of the fruitfulness of it he longed to know more of.  Part of him wants to admit he was - _is_ \- a selfish idiot.  He’s the exact entitled asshole Rey knew him to be.  And she couldn’t even rub it in his face properly.

Yet.

“Yes.”  Ben swallows hard around the answer.  “She’s my coworker.”

The long pause between the question and answer is suspect, and Ben doesn’t miss this time how Luke is studying him- sifting through his thoughts.  He always hated when his uncle did that.

Ben clears his throat.  “Has her family been contacted?”

Luke’s responding pause is equally suspect.

“Yes, the parents were called.”

And that’s the extent of it.  The period at the end drags on, repeating with each rhythmic beat of Rey’s monitor.   Ben tries to tune it out, prioritizes the slow rise and fall of Rey’s breathing. Forced as it is, it’s filling and strong.  He takes to breathing the same.

“Do you want to go in?”

Yes.

“No.”  There’s a subtle shake of the head, a look of impossibility.  How could he walk in there, without a handful of flowers as apology?  “No, I need to get back to work.”

Yet, Ben still hasn’t turned from the door.  It takes Luke’s hand, falling heavy on his shoulder, and his voice to pull him away with: “you should say hello to your mother first.”

Now that’s an encounter Ben cannot manage, even if he had a handful of flowers or even a truck-full of Maz’s finest.  Only, he doesn’t shake his head- can’t shake off the guilt or the sight of Rey. And he knows no amount of flowers could ever make Rey forgive him if he walked away from his family.

So.

 

* * *

 

The doorbell to Fated Flowers chimes to announce a customer.  Maz looks up, mid-frustrated battle with bear grass. At the sight of Ben, beelining for the pots by the counter, she straightens and huffs.

“Aha!” She exclaims, eying him.  “Just as I suspected after the call from your mother.  If you’re here for her belated bouquet, I’m not giving it to you until I get my apology.  Quitting last minute, barging in and barging right on out- you are the rudest stump I’ve ever met.”

“I’m not quitting.  I changed my mind,” Ben says bluntly, boldly before swooping in behind the counter with a stack of pots, plucking them one by one into a line, and already grabbing for Maz’s shovel on the counter.  He hunches over to dig into the bag of soil on the floor, and starts filling in the first pot. When he turns to finally look at Maz, eyebrows raised, he finds a matching pair shooting up from behind her glasses.  “I’ll be your delivery boy. On one condition.”

“Oh?  Do tell.”

His final delivery arrives, every day, at the same place at the same time.  Ben stands for a moment outside the door, staring through the glass, before entering without bothering to knock.  Rey never minds. She sleeps, at peace, as he places a pot of daffodils by her bed, and as he hangs verbena in the sunlight.  When he comes with succulents to line at the windowsill, the ventilator is gone and her breathing is deep. So the next day, Ben brings in scented primrose and blue iris and plants them around the room.  Every day, something new to fill the empty spaces. Until the machines are alive with petals and the walls painted green. And Rey, asleep in the valley he still dreams of.

Unlike in those dreams, Ben’s conversations are extremely one-sided during these visits.  Yet, he always makes sure to arrive at four o’clock, allowing him three hours before visitation ends.  It allows Ben three hours of Rey’s time, in which she sleeps and he waters the plants, quietly informing her on the wellbeing of the garden and her beloved wallflowers.

When he finds her school articles and textbooks in the shop’s backroom, he makes a spot for them in his crate and reads to her.  Often, Ben debates with her scribbled notes in the margins or pauses for a time on a mindless doodle she’s drawn in the corner. Always, he imagines what she would say or do in reply.  And he wishes she would. He wishes she would say or do anything, anything at all.

He wishes she would wake up.

Though Ben is drained by this feeling every day, it’s a week later that he thinks he feels on the brink of death from it.  He sits at Rey’s bedside, pointing out miniscule errors in _The Mythology of Art_ textbook he reads from, when he turns the page and it hits him square in the chest.  There is a photograph of an immortalized marble statue, highlighted in the softest gold lighting.  It’s familiar, and of course it is because it’s famously known -how could he not feel he’s seen it before?-  The embrace of a revived Psyche and her lover, Cupid.

Ben stares at the image, traces the soft carving of Psyche’s face and feels Rey’s skin.  And he is homesick.

He wishes-

“So green.”

It’s a muffled mumbling, barely heard, probably hallucinary, but Ben jumps, turns towards the voice- “Rey?!”

“It’s so green.”  

And she’s so still, but Rey’s eyes are groggy and squinted, and _open_ .  And for a heartbeat, Ben doesn’t have one.  Yet he manages to grab the console by her bed and slam down on the call button, probably breaking the whole damn thing by the sheer _crack!_ of it, but-

“I didn’t think it’d be so green.”

Rey is rambling, which is good- _so fucking good_ \- especially since he can’t do much but hold himself up on the bed-railing, so bone-crushingly tight and so relieved and too afraid to touch her hand though it lies, fingers finally moving, right within his reach.  She’s right there, right within his reach-

And then there are nurses and Luke flooding into their space, sweeping him out into the hallway before he can overcome his fear of holding onto her.

Ben collapses into a seat just outside her room, where he stays still (except the one knee that just won’t stop- won’t stop shaking).  At one point, his mom sits beside him, and Maz, and he’s less stiff after that. (But that knee won’t stop.)

Visiting hours are long over by the time Luke leaves the room, but an exception is made, privileges are played, and apparently Rey refuses to sleep.  (She’s sick of it.) So, Ben is granted entrance.

He takes a breath, opens the door, and is immediately stunned and halted.

Her eyes are locked onto him, having watched the door this entire time.  Waiting. Luke’s grumbling of her stubbornness shows in the purple of her eyelids, which droop low despite her determination to stay awake.  And she’s still so out-of-place lying under fluorescent lighting and on pale sheets, but the feeding tube is gone now and so are the wires, and Ben can’t help the rush and sigh of relief in his-

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Rey says, smiling, and it’s a beacon tugging him home.  With four large, eager steps, Ben’s at her side. Immediately, his lack of ease starts to show and he fidgets, unsure of his position.  He shouldn’t stand and make Rey crane her neck, but sitting would be imposing some kind of permanency that isn’t right- now that she’s awake.  (Wasn’t right before, either, but she wasn’t there, staring and judging.)

“I had a dream about you,” Rey murmurs and her smile turns toothy and dopey.  “You had wings.”

At that, Ben finally relaxes.  He laughs and glances at the IV bag by the bed.  “I see the meds are working.”

“Mm,” Rey says, and he thinks the chin nudge is supposed to be a nod.  “They want me to sleep.”

“And you should,” Ben recommends between chuckles. To this, Rey scowls and boos.  

Ben smiles, finally sits downs.  As he does so, Rey’s eyes follow and catch on the daffodils.  Her skin seems to warm at the renewed sight of them, and then her eyes are beaming over the rest of the room.  

“Who are these from?”  She asks.

Ben is still smiling, watching her, serene, when he replies, “a secret admirer.”

“Just one?” It’s a joke, he knows, even though her voice can’t quite get the intonation right at the moment.  Nor do her face muscles manage to raise her eyebrows quite high enough. “You’d think I’d have more than that.”

He knows it’s a joke.  Still. Ben doesn’t trust himself to speak.

Rey’s gaze turns to him, then, and it all changes.  She’s focused in a way the drugs reject, and that Ben decides is a trick of the false lighting.  Still, she is ridiculously stubborn and her voice is wonderfully soft when she adds:

“One is more than enough.”

He waits until she’s fast asleep to smile at that.  And then he’s sleeping, too.

 

* * *

 

It takes a few weeks, but Ben finally manages to not break a single stem while arranging flowers at the shop.  Or on route. Or to maime himself on any of the plants in the garden (with the help of Maz… and gloves). He begins to take joy in what he does; actually greets the customers that come in, smiles at the recipients of his deliveries, and puts a small plant in his own apartment.  The only thing he can never quite get accustomed to is the awkward hunch he has to perform over the counter, even when he sits, to work.

And not for the first time, Ben refrains from complaining about the obvious: he’s too tall and he looks like Quasimodo.

It is as he’s frowning over this one, minor, flaw in the otherwise well-adjusted life of his that the doorbell rings.  He glances up to see Rey, as she always ever is in this world of theirs: vibrate- vividly and violently so.

“I’m gone for a little while, and suddenly you take my job,” she spouts, gawking from the doorway.  Despite the winter knocking outside, she wears a thin excuse of a sweater and a layer of ever-tanned skin.  Completely forsaking the lethargic cold, and her doctor’s wishes, she barrels towards him. “What gives?”

Ben isn’t any more immune to seeing her like this, up-close and loud and beautiful, than he was before the accident.  Even after all the hospital and home visits (still with her ‘allergic’ flatmate), he has to look down for a moment to breathe, focus.  Now, he focuses on softly padding dirt in a pot.

“Don’t worry,” he replies calmly.  “This is the last one, and then you can have your job back.”

Rey is already on his side of the counter, arms folded on top of his notepad.  “And why do you have to make that one at all?”

Her tone is playful, and he matches it easily.  “I just do.”

“Oh,” Rey whistles, and he can feel her eyes and grin widening.  He focuses on his work, past the thudding in his chest, his jugular.  “Is it from my secret admirer?”

Ben nods with just the briefest of chin motions.  “Mm.”

Unrelenting, Rey continues to stare at him, drops her cheek onto her fist, intentionally dropping herself into his line of vision.  It’s odd, wrong, how long her cheeks have stayed unsmudged by dirt. No matter their current, lively and lovely shade of rose.

“Must be quite the beast to stay secret this long,” Rey muses aloud as she fiddles with the pruning shears.  She clenches it with all her strength, and both of them are silently relieved at how easily the shears snap shut from the pressure.  

“To send me flowers all through my recovery, yet not once showing his face…”

Ben scoffs, cocks an eyebrow at Rey’s assertions.  “Who says it’s a he?”

She shrugs, drops the shears with a blunt thud.  “Most cowards are men.”

It’s another gradual change in this life of his: his ability to laugh, more and more.  At the drop of a hat from her. He pauses to feel it move through him before returning to his work, and Rey falls quiet as she watches him.  She’s been doing that a lot these past few weeks, and he’s still nervous in the quiet comfort of their friendship. But for, slightly, different reasons now.

“There,” Ben murmurs with the final touch.  He takes a breath and sighs, his hands firm on the clay.  “Can’t find any paper around to write the note on,” because her arms are still folded on it, “so I guess I’ll just have to tell you:

Dear Rey, I’ve met you before-”

Ben turns to her, and she stares at the offering of daffodils long enough for that playfulness in her eyes to change and meet his.

“- and I’ll meet you again-”

Her smile is something out of a dream, his dreams, but it’s real.  Still his. Radiantly real. Eternal. Just like their world made of four walls, glass doors, and flowers. Just like-

“- I love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> angsty floral shop AU? check! Hope you enjoyed!


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